From Candidate to President: Barack Obama's Communication Challenges and Opportunities

President-Elect Barack Obama faces a variety of communication challenges as he transitions into becoming the 44^th President of the United States. More than any other President in recent memory, Obama is becoming the president with a great deal of upheaval in the country. Two wars, an economy in recession, rising unemployment, and a suffering national image abroad are just some of the challenges.

As much as the problems themselves, the political situation has created an environment where every political decision is being scrutinized, every move evaluated. Obama hasn’t even put his hand on the bible and already the spotlight is on. In this environment an effective communication strategy is the key to avoiding tragic mistakes that could cost him popularity and political influence.

Obama’s transition team is staring down a daunting list of communication challenges. But perhaps the greatest is adapting campaign promises to political reality.

Regardless of what Obama does or doesn’t do in terms of campaign promises, someone runs the risk of being left unhappy by it. Whether it’s the withdrawal from Iraq, or action on stem cell research to new economic policy, Obama campaigned on a very specific set of plans. Plans some people loved and others didn’t. No matter what course of action he takes, he will be presented with the challenge of making all his supporters and critics recognize the reasoning behind those decisions and maintaining a level of support through understanding.

David Corn of Mother Jones magazine wrote an opinion piece called “This Wasn’t Quite the Changed We Pictured” that appeared in the Washington Post on December 7. The opinion piece singled out Obama’s cabinet appointments for scrutiny, calling those appointments a disappointing move towards the middle of the political aisle. To quote Corn:

“It's no surprise that many progressives are -- depending on whom you ask -- disappointed, irritated or fit to be tied. Sure, Obama's appointments do represent change -- that is, change from the widely unpopular Bush-Cheney status quo. But do these appointments amount to the kind of change that progressives, who were an essential part of Obama's political base during the campaign, can really believe in?”

This is the heart of the communication challenge that Obama currently faces. It is also a warning light of things to come. The President-Elect needs to heed this warning and devise a communication strategy designed to present a high degree of transparency regarding his decision-making. He needs to show the people watching, the logic and reasoning that goes into the legislation, the executive orders and the policy decisions that are made. The most effective responses to: “What is he doing?” are to tell not only what is important, but to tell “Here’s why he is doing things a certain way.” It is essentially an exercise in “thinking out loud” for the Obama team.

It’s been widely noted that Obama brought many people to the political process who had never voted before. That is going to translate into many more pairs of eyes evaluating him through the first 100 days in office and beyond. The public interest will translate into greater amounts of news coverage as well, highlighting even minor decisions.

Obama has a great many stakeholders to consider. By stakeholder I mean groups with a vested interest. They include:

1. The people who voted for him- Who he will want to keep happy and demonstrate that he’s keeping his campaign promises.
2. The people who voted against him- Who are looking for an olive branch and a reason to be upbeat with the result.
3. The Democractic Party- Many of whom are looking forward to liberal president
4. The Republican Party-Who are looking for a shift in Obama to become a more conservative president.
5. The rest of the world- Who are looking for a United States of America they can support and rally behind.

This is an unrealistically oversimplified list. But it gives you a taste of how daunting the challenge to his credibility and popularity will be. It’s impossible to please everyone. That’s not even factoring in decisions forced upon him by external crisis.

President George W. Bush has made plenty of political decisions that he himself did not believe in, but saw as necessary. The much maligned Wall-Street Bailout being an excellent example. After Barack Obama is sworn in as the 44^th President of the United States, he will probably be forced to make decisions that he himself sees as a compromise. But he has to convey those decisions to stakeholders with the full force of his convictions. Again, a communication strategy that emphasizes thinking out loud is the best course of action for the Obama team. Simply put he has to draw us a map and show the American people the path he took that got him to that decision, with each and every important decision.

If he can do that, then he stands to remain popular among a wide range of stakeholder groups. That is something that the President of the United States will need in order to successfully navigate the complex set of challenges and choices ahead.

By Jonathan Allen

Giving Persuasive Presentations

Many persuasive speakers are presented with the challenge of engaging an audience on a topic that the audience feels no connection with. This lack of connection may be because the audience is unfamiliar with the topic or do not recognize its importance in relation to their lives. This is a common problem for presenters, especially if the topic of your speech or presentation is not alredy a hot button issue for your audience.

So how do you craft a speech to persuade an audience to want something they never knew they wanted? The answer is in a tried and proven strategy long used by professional speakers, Professors of speech communication, and top consultants. The strategy is easy to understand, learn and apply and is based on a common communication framework that many of us use in our daily lives.

Wardlaw Group Consultants and Trainers can help you quickly master this strategy and the accompanying techniques that will allow you to speak confidently and persuasively about a variety of topics.

Give us a call for a free consultation.

Improving Media Relations

By Jonathan Allen

Edited By: Butch Wardlaw

I am now a communication professional, but not long ago I was a news reporter for a newspaper. I’ve been on both sides of the media fence. I’ve seen the multitude of strategies that Public Relations Practitioners use in their media relations programs. I’ve seen where they work and where they fall short. The latter is what I want to address.

With this article I want to offer a window into the mind and world of a journalist, and I want to show you how to conduct a simple but effective strategy for building a relationship with the media and getting the ear of a journalist. Ultimately, it’s this understanding that may help your organization get the media recognition it desires.

Today’s models of media relations are often based upon a volume of output. For example, most companies create a media mailing list, and mass mail media outlets. They swarm them with press releases and sometimes even pre-written stories ready to be inserted onto a newspaper page. The underlying assumption is, the more output of press releases and news stories you throw out there, the more press coverage you will get.

Both strategies (multiple press releases and pre-written stories) leave much to be desired. Most press releases end up in the circular file and pre-written stories submitted to a media outlet are often scorned as a violation of journalism ethics. For strategies based on output efficiency, I find both are often inefficient when it comes to that bottom line for public relations practitioners: “How many stories are being reported about our organization?” The results often fall short of desired expectations. So much so, that we’ve lowered those expectations over time. In other words, efficient mass-production strategies often lack the key ingredients of a successful media strategy.

Ironically, it’s a back to basics approach that I’m toting here as the basic ingredients to a successful media strategy: low cost, low tech, and heavy on human interaction. Press releases are faceless pieces of paper, known for being biased among journalism circles. If it doesn’t catch a reporter’s eye quickly, it can be pushed off the desk and into the trash by a light breeze.

That’s why I recommend making use of face-to-face contact. News reporters are supposed to establish human contacts within their beat (area of reporting responsibility). That responsibility sometimes suffers in the in the hustle and bustle of life. Working hours get invested in building bridges to more high profile or mainstream news stories, sometimes short-changing the less mainstream, the smaller organizations or the less obvious newsworthy story or event. It’s easy for reporters to get tunnel-vision today as they pursue stories in a 24-hour news environment where the competition is tough and the pressure to punch out a story or news package is high.

Organizations and individuals in that situation can do themselves a favor by just calling up a reporter and inviting them to lunch, or a cup of coffee. Both are opportunities to talk about yourself or your organization, what you are doing right now, and what you are planning down the road. This is a great way to plant the seed of a story idea in a reporter’s mind or to pitch a story idea. Often times, reporters will grab shared information that you didn’t even recognize as being newsworthy in the process of social conversation.

That’s just the beginning of this strategy. You have to remember that reporters need a lot of things to put together a story. They need human sources to interview, they need information on paper or on the internet to review for information. Being an investigative reporter requires a lot of time and effort to produce even a single story. They have a lot of bases to cover.

You can’t do the job for the reporter, but you can make it your job to make the reporter’s job easier. That is the core theme of this media-relations strategy, making the reporter’s job easier.

Here are some tips for making it happen.

• When interacting with a reporter, mention upcoming news, events, and/or changes within your organization. Remember, reporters don’t put down the notepad, ever. Mentally take stock of what reporters are interested in hearing about. Engage in free open exchange of ideas and information.

• Once a reporter has expressed interest in something specific, take the initiative and tell the reporter that you’d be glad to gather names and contact information for potential sources for a news story on the subject. Also offer to dig through your computer at work and hand over relevant files, articles, brochures, fact sheets, anything of use to the story.

• Talk to members of your organization involved with the idea you proposed and ask if they would mind being interviewed by the media. If they say yes, assemble their names, job titles, and contact information. Send all that information on to the reporter and ask if they need anything else.

At this point, after you’ve done your part, you should stop and step away. You’ve proven yourself immensely helpful, and saved the reporter valuable time and energy by digging up a significant block of the information needed to investigate and write this story. Now you should back off and let the reporter take action. At a later juncture, if the story hasn’t appeared in the media, follow-up with the reporter and ask if they are still interested and if they need anything else. Armed with all the necessary tools and information, and your help, the reporter should be able to write a story in a condensed amount of time. They’ll appreciate that you did a lot of the grunt work.

While the rest of the business community is punching out press releases by the dozens and expending hours of work that will get poured into the trash, you can be investing in making media contacts that will gladly accept your help if it means a source of valuable story ideas and the information needed to turn them into real news stories.

I’m sure there will be a few critics to this strategy. But I believe it is media relations at its finest hour.

The Critical Lessons of Communication

Over the years, Wardlaw Group Consultants and Trainers have had the pleasure and privilege of working with many clients on a variety of projects related to the practice of communication. In fact, we collectively consider ourselves engaged in a long-term crusade to improve the way individuals and organizations communicate. Our projects take us from board rooms to class rooms; meetings to retreats; and large speaking engagements to intimate conversations. Our work involves engaging in dialogue with leaders, scientists, engineers, safety professionals, health care providers, public affairs professionals, members of the media, resource managers, and others throughout the public and private sectors.

During this work, we’ve both taught and learned a great deal about communication as a practice. Here's our quick and dirty assessment of what is happening in the world of communication.

1. Leaders set the tone for the way organizations communicate. The impact of leadership on the effectiveness of organizational and interpersonal communication cannot be overstated. Great things happen when leaders inspire employees and encourage transparency in communication.

2. We communicate best through messages. We’re still very much a sound bite world. The down side of this phenomenon, though, is that deeper dialogue is sometimes a casualty of debating through messages. However, when we master the art and science of communicating through messages, we can make sure the things we communicate to our audiences endure over time.

3. We communicate far more effectively when we first focus on reducing barriers to communication. This lesson is most critical when communicating in a crisis or when engaging in dialogue about risks versus benefits. Most common barriers to communication can be overcome by simply recognizing and acknowledging them, then working with those with whom you’re communicating to eliminate the barriers.

4. Effective communication is a process that takes time, commitment, and understanding. Engaging in an ongoing process to achieve shared understanding about a topic is far more effective than developing tools to prove your point. The former demonstrates commitment to understanding as well as an open style of communication while the latter simply demonstrates that you value winning above all else.

5. Good organizational communication, in large part, involves effective management of group communication and decision-making. Since our days of childhood school projects many have of have moaned about group work. This often stems from a lack of good group communication skill and knowledge on how to effectively manage a group. It is possible to engage in group tasks that meet the needs of the project and the organization and are simultaneously more satisfying to the group itself. The techniques are often very simple, yet very effective. Being a good group manager is an invaluable in a multitude of organizational communication situations.

6. The best communicators try to resolve conflict rather than avoid it. While there are many perfectly natural reasons to avoid conflict – stress, fear of embarrassment, potential loss of team members who stand to lose from conflict, and others – organizations benefit greatly when its members are empowered to reach out to those involved in conflict and resolve the issues.

7. We all get better through self-examination of our own communication and a willingness to improve. A major obstacle to improving communication in an organization is all members of the organization realizing they play a part in the effectiveness and quality of that organization’s communication. The tendency to exclude ourselves from evaluating the problem often results in a disjointed repair effort that misses a key component. It’s important for leaders at every level and professional communicators to self-exam and show a willingness to take part in changes necessary to improve the communication process. Not only does this maximize effectiveness, but it demonstrates a "Lead-The-Way" approach to communication leadership.

While we consider these lessons from our collective experiences very important, we constantly remind ourselves that it is even more important to keep an open mind and start with a fresh page during every client engagement. Therefore, as we continue our crusade to improve the way our nation communicates, our team remains committed to the ideals that every situation is different, every client has a unique story, and every challenge is an opportunity to find a new solution.

Give us a call if you ever need a hand.

The Wardlaw Group Team

(540) 552-6085/6086

TWG | A New Experience in Consulting & Training

The Wardlaw Group, Inc. provides a new experience in consulting and training by helping our clients overcome their unique communication, performance, and leadership challenges. From federal and state government to private industry, Wardlaw Group clients have consistently rated our team as excellent in the ability to deliver high quality work in even the most complex and sensitive consulting and training task areas.